Karl Knausgaard - My Struggle - Book Two

‘Thank you.’

She smiled. When she had her hair slicked back and didn’t wear any make-up she looked so young.

‘You definitely don’t look thirty-five,’ I said. ‘You look like twenty-five.’

‘Do I?’

I nodded.

‘They actually asked me for ID last time I went to the Systembolaget. I suppose I should be flattered by that, but at the same time I am stopped by all manner of Christian organisations when I’m walking in the street. I’m always the one they latch on to. When I’m with other people they don’t bother them . Then they see me and make a beeline for me. Must be something to do with the vibes I give off. There’s one we can redeem. She’s dying for redemption. Don’t you reckon?’

I shrugged.

‘Could be because you look so innocent?’

‘Ha! Even worse!’

She held her nose with two fingers and ducked her whole body under the water. When she re-emerged she shook her head first. Then she looked at me with a smile.

‘What’s up? Why are you looking at me like that?’ she asked.

‘That, for example,’ I said. ‘What you used to do as a child.’

‘What?’

‘Duck your head under the water.’

In the bedroom, which was adjacent to the bathroom, John began to cry.

‘Pat him on the back a bit and I’ll be with you in a minute.’

I nodded and went into the bedroom. He was lying on his back and flailing with his arms as he cried. I turned him over like a turtle and stroked his back with the palm of my hand. This is what he liked best, he always went quiet then, if he hadn’t had sufficient time to get himself into a real state.

I sang the five lullabies I knew. Linda came in and pulled him to her in bed. I went into the living room, put on my outdoor jacket, a scarf, a hat and shoes, which were by the balcony door, and went out. Sat down on the chair in the corner, poured myself some coffee and lit a cigarette. The wind was blowing from the east. The sky was deep and starry. Plane lights twinkled.

The summer I turned twenty mum rang one day and told me she had a large tumour in her stomach and was being admitted to hospital the following day to have it operated on. She said she didn’t know whether it was malignant or not, and it wasn’t possible to say how this would go. She said the tumour was so big she hadn’t been able to lie on her stomach for a long time. Her voice was tired and weak. I was staying with Hilde, a girlfriend from the gymnas , in Søm, outside Kristiansand, where a few minutes before I had been standing on the drive beside the car waiting for her. We were going swimming. Then she had called me from the balcony, your mother’s on the phone, Karl Ove. I immediately grasped the gravity of the situation, but nothing about it aroused any emotions, I was completely cold towards her. Rang off, went over to Hilde, who had got into the car, opened the passenger door and got in, said mum was having an operation and that I would have to go to Førde the next day. It felt like an event, one I should have a part in, a role I could play, the son who flies home to take care of his mother. I visualised the funeral, everyone passing on their condolences, how sorry they would be for me, and I thought about the inheritance she would bequeath. And then I thought at last I had something of significance to write about. While all this was going on another voice seemed to be running in parallel and saying no, this was serious, come on, this is your mother who’s dying, she means a lot to you, you want her to live, you do, Karl Ove! Telling Hilde would give me kudos, I felt, my importance would grow in her eyes. She drove me to the airport the following day, I landed in Bringelandsåsen, caught the airport bus to Førde centre and a local bus to the hospital, where I was given mum’s house keys. She had just moved, everything was packed away in boxes, I didn’t need to bother about that, she said, just leave them where they were, I’ll sort them out when I’m back. If you come back, I thought. Caught the bus up the valley through the strident green countryside, I was alone in the house all evening and night, went down to the hospital the next day, she was drowsy and weak after the operation, which had gone well. After I arrived back at the house, situated at the end of a short plain with gently sloping fields up to a mountain on one side and a river, a forest and another mountain on the other, I began to sort the boxes, put the ones with cooking utensils in the kitchen and so on. Darkness fell, the traffic on the road dwindled, the hum of the river grew, the shadow of my body flickered on walls and boxes. Who was I? A lonely person. I had just begun to learn to come to terms with it, that is minimise the significance of it, but I still had a good way to go, so every time I stopped working I would feel this chill in my head, this ice-cold evil, and perhaps put on my outdoor clothes, perhaps walk over the grass, through the garden gate, over the road to the river, which flowed past in the summer darkness, grey and black, stand between the shining-white birch trees and gaze at the water, which in some way soothed my feelings, matched them, what did I know? There must have been something to it, because that was what I did then, went out at night and searched for water. Sea, rivers, lakes, it made no difference. Oh, I was so preoccupied with myself, and I was so great, yet a nobody at the same time, quite shamefully alone and friendless, full of thoughts about the one, the woman, although I wouldn’t know what to do if I got her because I still hadn’t been to bed with one. Cunt, that only existed in theory for me. I would never dream of using such a word. Lap, bosom, backside, they were the words I used to describe my desire. I toyed with the idea of suicide, I had done that ever since I was small and despised myself for that reason, it would never happen, I had too much to avenge, too many people to hate and too much due to me. I lit a cigarette, and when it was finished I went back to the empty house with all the cardboard boxes. By three in the morning all the boxes were in place. I started moving the pictures in the hall to the living room. When I put one of them down a bird suddenly flew up into my face. Oh Jesus! I must have jumped a metre. It wasn’t a bird, it was a bat. It darted to and fro through the room with wild, agitated movements. I was terrified. I ran out, closed the door behind me and went up to the bedroom on the first floor, where I spent the whole night. I fell asleep at about six and slept through till three the next afternoon, threw my clothes on and caught the bus to the hospital. Mum was better, but still groggy from painkillers. We sat on a terrace, she was in a wheelchair. I told her some of the terrible experiences I’d had that spring. The notion that I shouldn’t worry her so soon after the operation didn’t occur to me until several years later. When I returned to the house the bat was hanging from the wall. I took a washtub and put it over the bat. Heard it banging around inside and almost threw up with revulsion. Dragged the bucket down the wall and got it onto the floor without the bat escaping. So that it was trapped at least, if not dead. I did as the night before, closed the living-room door and went up to the bedroom. Lay reading Stendhal’s Le Rouge et Le Noir until I fell asleep. The next morning I found a brick in the shed. Carefully lifted the bucket, found the bat lying still, hesitated for a second, was there a way to get it outside? Nudge it into a bucket perhaps and then cover it with a newspaper? I didn’t want to crush it if I didn’t have to. Before I had really made up my mind I smacked the brick down as hard as I could on the bat and squashed it against the floor. Pressed the brick down and wriggled it to and fro until I was sure there was no life left. The feeling of soft flesh against hard stone stayed with me for several days, indeed weeks. I shoved a dustpan under the bat and threw it into the ditch beside the road. Then I washed where it had been, thoroughly, and caught the bus to the hospital again. The next day mum came home, and I was a good son for two weeks. Amid the lush green of the valley, beneath the grey sky, I carried furniture and unpacked boxes until the time came for me to start university and I caught the bus to Bergen.